Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the availability of supervised non-resident parent visits in schools during the covid-19 lockdowns.

Schools should keep a record of all visitors with sufficient detail to support rapid contact tracing if required by NHS Test and Trace and those individuals will be expected to comply with the school’s arrangements for managing and minimising risk. This includes taking particular care to maintain distance from staff and pupils. Schools will also have the discretion to require face coverings for visitors where social distancing cannot be safely managed.

The local restriction tiers have introduced limits on people gathering indoors or outdoors. However, there are exceptions to enable people to meet, including for contact between parents and children where children do not live in the same household as both parents. Parents can, therefore, visit their children in residential provision such as children’s homes and residential schools that are registered as children’s homes.